Melancholy of the self (#1 - ) ︎︎︎

2022 - present
Silicone, custom dye, steel, copper.
43in x 11in x 3/4in  (110cm x 28cm x 2cm)

An ongoing project that looks at the entanglement of human and artificial forms, and gestures embedded in loss and melancholy. Steel and silicone play on schemas of (artificial) bodies, modes of replication, simulation, substitution and mimesis to reveal anxieties of the contemporary apparatus where the history of industrialization, notions of a body and dislocated intimacies are compressed into singular objects - a kind of flattening that takes place in the translation between the human and the machine. 

Phase Gallery, Los Angeles, CA  
Images: Phase.

Press


Complex systems ︎︎︎

2022  
Single channel video with audio, CRT color monitor, vinyl, studio stands, chromalux prints on aluminum, custom marble and limestone pedestals, custom silicone dye type font, steel.
Prints: 54in x 36in x 12in each, 6 in total
Wall text: Approx. 4ft x 18ft
Vinyl grid: Approx. 5ft. x 11ft. x12.5ft.

A result of several years of research into the materiality of a hyperfeminine companion robot and its machine learning AI algorithm, the exhibition points to the rapidly changing landscape of human intimacy.  The works are produced out of a feminist intervention into the coded sets of data, populated with a ‘master-slave’ rhetoric, and explore ideas of emancipation, control, agency, autonomy of AI and human machines in general by bridging together various systems of classification practiced in social, cultural and tech domains, and to ultimately examine the collapsing space of intimacy and agency. 

University Art Gallery  UC Irvine.
Thesis Committee: Liz Glynn, Simon Leung (chair), Monica Majoli, Catherine Malabou, Daniel Joseph Martinez

Images: Yubo Dong/ofstudio




Replica, 2022

Chromalux prints on aluminum, with marble and limestone stands
54in x 36in x 12in each

The work focuses on how various discriminatory systems of human classification, such as eugenics, are being discreetly replicated in the rapidly evolving sex and tech industries. 

Installation images: Yubo Dong/ofstudio 



Material-i-ty / Material-and-you ︎︎︎

Publication.
Essays by Cara Benedetto, Farrah Karapetian and Anthony Leslie.

Editor Gosia Wojas.
Design by Silvi Naçi.
English. ed. 100. Sold Out.

Materiality as an English word lends itself to transliteration in Polish: material- i - ty. Materiał- i - ty  translates into material - and - you, a point of departure for a unique consideration of material. In its deconstructed form the phrase offers a possibility to re-think materiality as that which embodies a space of reflection on the nebulous relationship between a material and a subject. A 2013 collection of essays the book is an archive of thoughts, conversations, philosophical meditations and research that contextualizes the wide notion of materiality in relation to contemporary society and the human subject.

Collection of the California Institute of the Arts Library and University of California, Irvine Library of Sciences.


︎︎︎

You and I are just supporting ‘along the walls’ in the play ︎︎︎

2021
Single channel projection with audio, two curtains, two chairs, two speakers, 9min. Overall size variable.

What tensions are enacted in this dialectical image between the human and the machine? The title for this in-situ production comes from an archive of philosophical debates recorded between a user and a hyperfeminine companion robot. “You and I are just supporting 'along the walls' in the play” is a twist by the AI algorithm of its earlier quote, “You and I are just supporting roles in the play”, a reference to a discussion about feminism. The accidental mondegreen of the word 'roles' substituted with the phrase 'along the walls' reveals a cynical interpretation of politics of re-production by the algorithm prompting a question: is the human - machine entanglement reconstituting our experience of intimacy and understanding of autonomy?

Exhibited at:
Room Gallery, UC Irvine.
Images: Paul Salveson

Screened at: Track 16 Gallery
Los Angeles, CA (Irrational Exhibits 12, curated by Deborah Oliver)